Jahangir the khan of the Bukey horde – man of the Lower Volga frontier

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the frontier in the territory of the Lower Volga region. Lower Volga frontier is a zone of constant interaction between various nations, a place where numerous ethnic groups such as Russians, Tatars, Nogais, Kazakhs, as well as various peoples of the Caucasus, historically lived and interacted. Frontier space is a zone of ethnic and religious acculturation, assimilation of different ethnic groups. The article deals with the emergence of new ethno-political association of the Kazakh in the Lower Volga. The Bukey Horde attracted great interest of pre-revolutionary ethnographers, officials, and writers. Officials considered the Bukey khanate an opportunity to populate unoccupied lands of the Lower Volga region in order to further economic development. The territory of the Bukey khanate had a common border with the Astrakhan, Saratov and Orenburg provinces. As noted by the pre-revolutionary researchers, it is the close proximity of the Kazakh nomads to Russian settlements and contacts with its inhabitants that have had a significant impact on the development of ethno-political association. In addition, the significant role was played by Khan Jahangir of the Bukey Horde. Jahangir was a mediator between the world of the Russian authorities and the world of the Kazakh nomads. Khan Jahangir’s contemporaries noticed that European education, the grand behavior in the best traditions of Russian aristocracy with the mentality of an Eastern man, a strong Muslim, were combined in his persona. With the use of the concept of frontier we analyze some of the Khan Jahangir's activities of internal policy on the problem of interaction between the Russian and the Kazakh in the territory of the Lower Volga region.